Andrew Neil describes BBC licence fee as a 'Straitjacket'
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The former Brexit Party leader turned GB News prime time host has congratulated MPs in the French Parliament who this week voted to end their 80-year-old TV licence fee. The French National Assembly backed President Emmanuel Macron’s government bill which scraps the fee which funds 85 percent of its TV channels including France Televisions, France 24, Arte and Radio France.
The move in Paris comes as the new Tory Prime Minister – Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak – will face enormous pressure to scrap the licence fee in Britain too.
Conservative MPs and campaigners have been pressing hard for an end to the tax on people with a television set amid concerns that the BBC has leftwing, anti-Brexit, woke bias and the funding model is out of date for the modern media market.
Following the decision in the French National Assembly, Mr Farage took to Twitter to congratulate them on the move.
He said: “The French Parliament have voted to abolish the 80-year-old TV licence fee. If only ours would have the courage.”
The new legislation was brought forward by recently re-elected President Emmanuel Macron to make good on his campaign pledges which included several measures aimed at “increasing the buying power of French households.”
He saw ending the antiquated TV licence model – a tax on households – as a means of helping the cost of living crisis for low income households.
In the UK scores of people, mostly women from low poorer families, have been sent to prison for not paying the BBC TV licence which funds seven and six-figure salaries of millionaire celebrities like football highlights presenter Gary Lineker.
The French license fee, which was created decades ago to help fund French public radio and its new TV channels.
It was applied to each household that owned a TV set and most recently cost €138 (£116) per year less than the £159 extracted to found the BBC in Britain.
It brought in approximately between £3 billion per year and financed most of the services of Radio France and France Televisions (which comprises five national channels and many more regional ones), as well as their programming slates, commissioned content and workforce of about 110,000 people.
The move provoked a strike by thousands of employees of French broadcasters but Macron and the French Assembly pushed ahead anyway.
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Efforts to end the licence fee in the UK have been led by the campaign group Defund the BBC.
Rebecca Ryan, Campaign Director of Defund the BBC said: “This is one of the rare occasions that Britain should follow the example set by France in scrapping the TV Licence Fee.
“The current Government have consistently flirted with the idea of abolishing this outdated concept but have failed to fully commit.
“The two leadership candidates should show leadership on this issue and set out a cast iron guarantee that they will get rid of the Licence Fee if they become PM.”
However, members of the House of Lords are trying to force all British taxpayers to fork out more for the BBC.
In a recent report a Lords committee on the future of the licence fee, which included former BBC Director General Lord Hall and members who had been paid by the Corporation, suggested that the licence fee should be replaced by a household tax even if people did not own a television.
But recently the influential Common Sense Group of righting Tory MPs published a book of policies which called for the licence fee to be scrapped as a precursor to breaking up the BBC.
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